Friday, August 30, 2013

Beethoven's Eighth


Continuing my series of program notes:

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Symphony No.8 in F, Op.93



Allegro vivace e con brio

Allegretto scherzando

Tempo di minuetto

Allegro vivace



This symphony was one of Beethoven’s own favourites. He described it affectionately as his ‘little’ symphony. Unfortunately, that description has led many listeners to regard it as slight. Actually, the work may be a listener’s best opportunity to get a comprehensive musical portrait of the composer. It is Beethoven’s most personal utterance, according to Sir George Grove in his book, Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies. And it’s not just the popular stereotype of ‘Beethoven the thunderer’ we hear – although his forceful personality drives the workings-out of the first and last movements – it is Beethoven the rough humourist.

The Eighth is an example of the sort of pithy statement Beethoven could make when he worked quickly. Beethoven usually sketched his symphonies in the summer then wrote them up in detail, in the studio so to speak, during the winter and spring. But that doesn’t appear to have been the method this time. The Eighth was composed during the summer months of 1812, close upon the completion of Symphony No.7. The whole composition took only four months.

Beethoven spent the summer of 1812 travelling around the various mineral baths of Bohemia – from Teplitz to Karlsbad to Franzensbrunn and back to Karlsbad and Teplitz. 

A 19th century view of Teplitz by Lovro Janša
He was hoping to alleviate various stomach ailments by taking the waters, unsuccessfully as it turns out. There were various other disturbances in the composer’s life at the time. This was the period of his letter to the ‘Immortal Beloved’, an artefact of his unrequited love for a woman whose identity still eludes scholars. And he was, as always, struggling with money. The value of his annuity from Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz and Count Kinsky had shrunk due to devaluation of the Austrian currency.

At Teplitz, Beethoven met the great poet and playwright, Goethe, for whose play, Egmont, he had provided incidental music in 1810. Goethe’s diary notes the 19, 20, 21 and 23 July as occasions on which they met. But Goethe’s overall impression of Beethoven could be distilled in one word. He is ‘uncontrolled’ (ungebändigt) he wrote to the songwriter, Carl Zelter, on 2 September 1812. Notwithstanding the fact that Goethe noted that Beethoven played for them (‘beautifully’) on 21 July, he was shocked by Beethoven’s personal behaviour. Much of Vienna’s aristocracy was present at Teplitz that summer, all anxious about Napoleon’s latest exploit: his foray into Russia. Beethoven deliberately snubbed the Austrian royal family in front of Goethe who had stood to one side and bowed as they passed. ‘Goethe delights far too much in the court atmosphere, far more than is becoming in a poet’, said Beethoven. Of course, we might agree; Beethoven and Goethe are better remembered these days. But that didn’t make Goethe feel any better about Beethoven’s behaviour.

Beethoven snubs the Austrian royal family; Goethe bows as they pass

Yet this work gives the lie to any perception that Beethoven was ‘uncontrolled’ in his musical mind. It is probably more important to note that Beethoven the composer was able to master violent contradictory impulses in this music. Goethe’s ‘ungebändigt’ refers, of course, to Beethoven’s personality. But it is also true that Goethe would probably not have recognised the immense control Beethoven exercised in controlling his violent musical impulses. This symphony is arguably Beethoven’s most disciplined. Its containment of jokes and distortions within the prevailing classical style reveals immense intellectual power.

The symphony begins with a phrase that sounds like the posing of a rhetorical question and its various answers. A consequent development in a series of long notes could be considered deepening of the subject matter except that it goes on so long you wonder if Beethoven is pulling our legs. And then the music peters out in staccato leaps leaving the solo bassoon exposed just prior to the second subject. All jokes aside, the development almost rises to the intense heights of some of Beethoven’s longer first movements. There is dissonant drama, fugal intensity, dizzying displacement of metre, a whiff of victory...Then the sustained notes from the exposition return. We hear the petering-out prior to the return of the ‘second subject’. But are we already in the recapitatulation? We haven’t heard the return of the first subject yet! Yes, we have: disguised as development. Beethoven has played expertly with classical sonata form in this first movement, and it ends pertly with an exact repetition of the symphony’s opening phrase: a neat punchline.

Perhaps the genuine novelty in this symphony is the second movement. Not a typical slow movement, it has almost a ‘comic opera’ feel. The ‘tock-tock-tock’ woodwind accompaniment to the opening theme was said to have been inspired by a new time-keeping instrument, Mälzel’s chronometer.

It was Beethoven who had pioneered the replacement of the standard third-movement minuet and trio with the scherzo and trio in his Second Symphony. Such was the Allegretto scherzando’s level of whimsy here, however, that Beethoven reverted to a minuet and trio – albeit a robust one - for this work.

The final movement is a sonata rondo, but once again Beethoven is not content to work safely within a standard form. The movement makes its way to the end via the expedient of a march – joking? Or intensifying the form?

In October 1812, Beethoven left the spas and moved on to Linz. There he finished this work, but his real purpose in travelling south was to intervene in his brother’s personal life. Beethoven was scandalised by the fact that his brother was living ‘in sin’ with his housekeeper, Therese Obermeyer; he took unjustified steps to put an end to it; the brothers came to blows. We have already noted Goethe’s judgement of Beethoven as ‘uncontrolled’. At least he was disciplined in the music, and, as Goethe concedes, his playing was ‘beautiful’.

The Eighth premiered 27 Feb 1814 in a concert which saw repeats of the Symphony No.7 and Wellington’s Victory, a display piece Beethoven had originally written for another of Mälzels inventions, the panharmonicum. In Beethoven’s day, the Seventh Symphony was much admired, and Wellington’s Victory (celebrating the defeat of Napoleon) made quite a splash. But Beethoven’s ‘kleine’ symphony deserved, and still deserves, more appreciation.



Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2011

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013
Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier selections, published 


 

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Richard Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" (extracts)

Continuing my series of program notes:

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Der Rosenkavalier, Op.59 – extracts

Der Rosenkavalier was the fifth of Richard Strauss’ operas, the second written in collaboration with librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The title (The Knight of the Rose) derives from a bit of stage business (purported to be an 18th century custom, but invented by Hofmannsthal) whereby a knighted emissary presents a silver rose to a woman on behalf of her suitor. 

Robert Sterl's 1912 painting of Ernst von Schuch conducting Der Rosenkavalier
When it first appeared, Der Rosenkavalier was seen by many critics as a retreat from the atonal modernism of Strauss’s two immediately previous stage works – Salome and Elektra. Strauss had wanted to write a ‘Mozartian opera’ after Elektra, but Der Rosenkavalier has a sumptuousness which exceeds classicism. Its plot possesses some similarities with The Marriage of Figaro, but this ‘comedy for music’ is elevated by character portraiture that has rarely been surpassed in opera. It remains Strauss’ most popular, indeed best-loved, work.
Set in Vienna in 1740, Der Rosenkavalier, tells how the 17 year-old Octavian outwits the bullish Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau in his quest for the hand of the young convent girl, Sophie. But that is not all: it is a story of the magic of love at first sight; of nostalgia, self-sacrifice and the passing of time. Octavian, the ‘Knight’, first lays eyes on Sophie during the presentation of the Rose. Strauss’s orchestra wonderfully expresses the slow-motion intoxication of the moment. Octavian must first be given up by his older lover, the Feldmarschallin, Marie-Thérèse, who has known all along, somewhere inside, that one day he would fall for someone his own age, and whose realisation accounts for the change in the first act from amorous enthusiasm to mood of regret, and whose proud surrender is the background for the glorious Trio which climaxes the opera.
Strauss’ score retains a Mozartian level of beauty throughout (not even compromised by scenes of raw burlesque such as the stage-managed outwitting of Ochs in the Third Act). The ‘Viennese waltzes’, though anachronistic, are of such quality that, by this opera alone, Richard Strauss could almost challenge his unrelated namesake for the title of ‘Waltz King’.
Tonight’s extracts revolve around the three main characters – the Feldmarschallin, Octavian (sung by a soprano) and Sophie. During the orchestral introduction we can imagine the passionate love of Octavian and the Feldmarschallin between the sheets. The curtain rises. There is some minor bickering as when Octavian leaves his sword where Mahomet, the Feldmarschallin’s pageboy, might see it when he brings in her morning chocolate, but the big rift is yet to happen. They are still calling each other: ‘Mein Schatz!’ and ‘Mein Bub!’ After the Marschallin’s morning levée after everyone has left, including Ochs (‘der aufgeblasne, schlechte Kerl’), the Marschallin realises that she is growing older, and she tells Octavian that sooner or later (‘heut oder morgen’) he will leave her for a woman his own age. Vehemently denying it, he leaves in a huff. But Ochs and the Marschallin have arranged for Octavian to present the silver rose to Ochs’ fiancée, Sophie. Almost as if fated, he and Sophie fall in love. After the predatory Ochs has been driven off, Octavian finds himself face to face with the Marschallin who sees immediately that he has transferred his affections. She releases him to love the girl she said he would find ‘heut oder morgen’, and Octavian and Sophie express their disbelief at what has happened so quickly in ‘Ist ein Traum’. The Marschallin takes her leave, but Mahomet comes in once last time to collect the handkerchief she has left behind.

G.K. Williams © 2011



This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013





Wednesday, August 28, 2013

A bit of drama


I loved this article by Hugh Laurie on what he likes about Los Angeles. He shares a lot of my enthusiasm.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/northamerica/usa/losangeles/10260419/Hugh-Lauries-Los-Angeles.html


But I guess I shouldn't be too Pollyanna-ish.

Today as I walking past the local high school I noticed three police cars parked outside the school. They were in a formation (two parallel either side of the entrance arches, one perpendicular on the kerb) which suggested regular attendance at hometime.

And then, the other day I saw this:

Curfew sign, LA
I don't recall seeing anything like this in benign Australia (perhaps the prohibition on liquor signs or anti liquor trafficking signs in Central Australia are closest). On the other hand, these are among the features that give this city its friction and intruiguing drama.


Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Christopher Rouse's "Der gerettete Alberich"


Continuing my series of program notes:


Christopher Rouse (born 1949)
Der gerettete Alberich – fantasy for percussionist and orchestra (1997)

At the end of Götterdämmerung, the final opera in Wagner’s ‘Ring cycle’, Brünnhilde has ridden her horse into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, Valhalla has burned to the ground killing the gods and the Rhine has flooded the world, leaving the earth ripe for renewal. But what has happened to Alberich, the Nibelung-king, who set the chain of destruction in motion by cursing the ring? Wagner doesn’t say. Is he free to wreak havoc all over again?

Arthur Rackham's illustration of Alberich driving the Nibelungs
This is the question that inspired Christopher Rouse when he composed Der gerettete Alberich. What you have here is part-concerto. Composed for Evelyn Glennie, the work demands the soloist’s skill on a different set of percussion instruments in each movement – guiros and a bank of bongos, wood blocks, and other drums in the first; marimba and steel pan in the second; drum kit in the third. But the work is also programmatic. The title can be translated into English as ‘Alberich Saved’ and critic Colin Anderson has outlined the three movements in terms of ‘Alberich plotting his nefarious schemes, then reflecting on his mis-spent and, in some ways, tragic life, and then...on the rampage to once again seek the ring of power to make him lord of the world’.  Rouse himself has described the work as ‘more of a fantasy for solo percussionist and orchestra’. But it’s also ‘a fantasy...on themes of Wagner’.
Use of quotation is nothing new in Rouse’s work – his Symphony No.1 incorporated the Adagio from Bruckner’s Symphony No.7; the Trombone Concerto cited music of Leonard Bernstein who had recently died. But Rouse’s use of quotation is not gimmickry. Rather it is a Mahlerian embrace of the world. Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed has spoken of Rouse incorporating ‘ uncontrived, the range of the musical experience typical of his generation’, and this includes Rock ‘n Roll, which no doubt inspired ‘Alberich’’s drum kit workout at the beginning of movement three.
You can cite impressive facts about Rouse. He’s currently the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his Trombone Concerto and has won a Grammy Award for his Guitar Concerto, Concert de Gaudi (2002). What is perhaps more impressive is the genuine emotional experience he can provide to an audience. Early works could be speedy and harrowing; a change of direction saw him master the slow movement. Many listeners have remarked on a darkness in Rouse’s vision. The last page of his Symphony No.1 carries the inscription ‘de profundis clamavi’ (From the depths I have cried out to you, O Lord). But works from the late 1990s marked a ‘look towards the light’. Der gerettete Alberich could be thought to straddle both dark and light visions.
The work opens with the closing bars of Götterdämmerung (the ‘Redemption through Love’ motif). Then Alberich insinuates his return on the guiro. This segues into music to which Alberich slipped on rocks at the bottom of the Rhine in Das Rheingold. The return of this motif later, after much development of themes, signals a kind of recapitulation. The second movement is one of Rouse’s ‘wondrous’ slow movements. The appropriateness of Alberich’s ‘Renunciation of Love’ motif, played by a forlorn solo oboe after a downward string glissando, is almost uncanny. The dawn music followed by the baleful pronouncement of the ‘Power of the Ring’ motif leads into the third movement which begins sounding almost like an American high school football marching band. In this movement ‘Alberich’ wreaks maximum havoc, most obviously in timpani and percussion cadenzas on the Nibelung motif. It’s terrifying but not without humour when you realise that Rouse has used the ‘Alberich turning himself into a serpent’ motif to wind up tension in the bass.
It is marvellous the way Rouse weaves Alberich-related motives from Wagner’s masterwork into his own composition. But the work is not really an excuse to play ‘spot the quote’ (although you get the impression Rouse would not begrudge any audience that fun). It’s probably enough to acknowledge that this work exemplifies Rouse’s music as some of the most compelling, enjoyable and satisfying around today and that Der gerettete Alberich is a spectacular showcase for a percussion soloist.

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2013

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013 
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013 
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013 
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013  
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013 
Wagner's  Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013




Dots on the literary map


San Francisco, on the weekend: Cutting down to Market Street, we came across this 'grill'.



"Why is it called 'the home of the Maltese Falcon'?" I asked the concierge. The answer: because Dashiell Hammett lived next door and it was in this establishment that he wrote most of the 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon.

Okay, fair enough, I know that in Australia you can still see where Patrick White lived in Centennial Park or the swimming pool in Fitzroy where Helen Garner's characters in Monkey Grip hung out, but it seems to me that in the US the literary map is much more densely populated.


Thursday, August 22, 2013

A reminder


I interviewed the San Francisco-based composer John Adams recently, ahead of concerts he's doing with the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras. One of the pieces he'll be conducting is his 2009 symphonic work, City Noir, partly inspired by the jazz-inflected scores of noir films set in Los Angeles in the 1940s.

I saw this sign in Reseda yesterday and it reminded me of one of Adams' statements that didn't make it into the final interview: "Los Angeles is one of the most ethnically-rich urban environments in the world"


Several decades of signage


Downtown LA

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Scriabin's Piano Concerto

Continuing my series of program notes:


Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, Op.20

Allegro
Andante
Allegro moderato

The Russian Alexander Scriabin pursued a fascinating musical career. Beginning as a composer of Chopinesque piano miniatures, in his last works he entered the realm of atonal harmony that was soon to be filled by Schoenberg and Bartók. Moreover he sought impossible goals inspired by a vision that continued on where Wagnerian music drama left off. The older Scriabin wasn’t content just to create a Wagnerian gesamtkunstwerk blending all the arts into an operatic festival that could inspire the whole community, as Wagner intended with his Ring cycle; Scriabin sought to blend massive orchestral sound with colours and eventually fragrances in a work so powerful it might end the world. 1912’s Prometheus did in fact use a ‘colour organ’, but, ironically, Scriabin died of blood poisoning from a pimple on his lip before he could realise his more messianic visions. In the meantime, he had experienced probably the most extreme stylistic progress of any composer in the western repertoire.

Alexander Scriabin
Grandiosity might not be apparent in music of the younger Scriabin, who, like Chopin, was also a superb miniaturist. In listening to this concerto you can understand contemporary pen portraits of Scriabin as an effete dandy, brought up by two coddling grandmothers and a maiden aunt. Although Scriabin went to the military academy that his father had attended, he was spared some of the more rigorous duties. He ended up at the Moscow conservatory, studying with Zverev the hard task-master who also taught Rachmaninov and gaining second place to Rachmaninov on graduation in 1892.
Like Rachmaninov, Scriabin was a fantastic pianist. This concerto was written for his own repertoire. It was conceived in the throes of an infatuation with ‘M.K.F.’, a girl from Düsseldorf. By the time it was ready for scoring and copying Scriabin was on the verge of marriage to Vera Ivanovna Isakovich, a fine pianist herself who prepared the two-piano version of this concerto, but not someone approved of as a match by Scriabin’s guardians. Indeed, the changes in Scriabin’s personal life measured against the unprecedented high-speed at which this concerto was composed gives you some sense of how quickly Scriabin’s emotional moods and allegiances swung at this time; how rudderless he could seem. Scriabin’s aunt,  Lyubov’ Aleksandrovna, sought the publisher Belayev’s help in discouraging the marriage to Vera. She ended a December 1896 progress report on that score by telling Belayev that Scriabin had just cut his fingernails without her having to remind him!
Despite the speedy conception of this work, Belayev had continually to cajole Scriabin for the orchestrations, corrections and other more tedious preparations prior to publication. He also wanted Scriabin to send the score to Rimsky-Korsakov for comments and ‘everything must be done by the 20th of May [1897], if Safonoff is to try the Concerto out on his pupils before vacation’. Scriabin eventually supplied movement one. After quickly looking through it, Rimsky confessed to incomprehension and criticised ‘its disorder and inaccuracies of musical etiquette.’ Mortified, Scriabin answered with a pledge to exterminate his carelessness, but placed the letter in an envelope addressed to the composer Liadov, while Rimsky got Liadov’s letter. ‘Is it possible that you find yourself blowing your foot when you mean to blow your nose?,’ his frustrated publisher Belayev bellowed.  
Rimsky was equally critical of the second and third movements, but it’s difficult to understand why he was so scathing. More successfully than his idol Chopin, Scriabin achieves an orchestration that complements the fulsome solo part.
Scriabin’s biographer, Faubion Bowers, describes the work as one of ‘elegance, grace and ineffable delicacy of craftsmanship....a concerto for soloist and fifty other musicians with constant rubato or irregular rhythmic flow, and much of it to be played con sordino [muted], with the soft pedal down as well. Yet, it is written in shade, as the opening horns announce and few shafts of sunlight penetrate...’ Those that do, however, have an intensity which we have come to expect from Russian romanticism.
The work’s second movement consists of four contrasting variations ‘full of ingenious melismata and crystalline figuration’. Bowers describes the folktune-like theme as the Russian soul speaking softly but audibly. The last movement is a polonaise, although perhaps not obviously so. The second theme provides some of the few instances of sweeping Russian lyricism in this urbane work.
In the end, those who opposed Scriabin’s marriage to Vera failed in their quest to stop it. Scriabin and Vera married in August 1897. In Odessa on their Crimean honeymoon, Scriabin premiered the concerto with a local orchestra conducted by Safanoff.    

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2013


This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:


Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013 
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013 
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013 
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013  
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013 
Wagner's  Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013